


On Salisbury Plain

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: My Family (And Other Dinosaurs) [10]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-31
Updated: 2009-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 21:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3264629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unable to remain in school because of a fire, and unable to return home because her keys are in her jacket pocket in her locker in said school, Liz tries to borrow her father’s keys. Due to the unfortunate combination of an urgent meeting with the MoD, a PR disaster in Wiltshire and a hasty decision on Jenny Lewis’s part, it doesn’t go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            The ward was greyish, as hospital wards often are. A boy sat in his bed, absorbed by computer solitaire, and looked up quickly and set the laptop aside as firm footsteps approached and smiled broadly. “Liz!”

 

            “Hi, Jamie.” Liz smiled back and abstracted a chair from the bedside of Jamie’s neighbour so she could sit down, hoisting her backpack onto her lap. “Hanging in there?”  


            “Yeah.”  He put more cheerfulness into the smile for her, although they both knew there wasn’t too much to smile about; after a solid two and a half years in remission, Jamie Burke-Lester’s acute lymphoblastic leukaemia had returned, and now he was back in chemotherapy, which he detested. It made his hair fall out, and it made him throw up.

 

            “Good. I brought the things you asked for. Plus extras.” Liz opened the rucksack and started to pull things out.

 

            “Ooh. Extras?” Jamie sat up straight, watching as a pile developed on his bed; a new A4 sketchbook, a tin of drawing pencils, a packet of mechanical pencils, a fresh rubber, as well as a set of brightly coloured felt-tipped pens and a memory stick.

 

            “Yup, extras. The pens are from me, the memory stick is from Dad; he says it might not be as good as drawing from life, but drawing from photos is better than drawing from memory. Where’s your laptop?”

 

            “Bedside thingy.” Jamie gestured vaguely, absorbed in the new equipment. “Liz, you’re officially the best big sister _ever_. I finished the old sketchbook yesterday morning and I’ve been bored as hell ever since.”

 

            Liz laughed, and hugged him. “You’re officially the best little brother ever. Can I see the old sketchbook?”

 

            “Sure.”

 

            His sister picked up the old book and flipped through it. Jamie had inherited his dark hair and eyes from his mother, his talent for drawing from his father, and his liking for compromise from neither –hence the double-barrelled name; after Sir James Lester and Kathy Burke had divorced, Liz had chosen to stick with Lester, the youngest, Nicky, had changed his surname to Burke, but Jamie had stayed neutral and picked Burke-Lester- but right now, only the talent for drawing concerned Liz. Here, a detail from the cover of his latest favourite book, here, a cartoon of a nurse who had failed to befriend him, here a page of hand sketches for practise. Liz whistled appreciatively. “You’re damned good.”

 

            “I know,” said Jamie smugly, and he grinned and ducked as she swiped at him. “You know, I love how you and Dad don’t treat me like I’m fragile now.”

 

            “You are fragile,” Liz said matter-of-factly.

 

            “Yeah, but less of the tread-softly-round-the-invalid from Mum and Nicky would be cool.”

 

            “Should I mention it?”

 

            “What!” Jamie squawked. “Hell, no! You’ll start a feud, I know you!”

 

            “That’s me,” Liz agreed mildly. “Speaking of Dad, can I take this home to show him?” She brandished the sketchbook she’d been looking through.

 

            “’Course.” Jamie looked up from writing his name and three addresses (his mother’s, his father’s, and the leukaemia ward’s) in the front of the new sketchbook, which would take him less time if he weren’t using red and black for alternate letters. “Get him to write me a nice long email about which ones he likes and why and what I’ve done wrong and all that.”  


            “I can do better than that. I’ll send him to see you,” Liz said, feeling slightly guilty that she knew why Lester had had to miss his last appointment to see Jamie and Jamie didn’t. Entelodonts in Glasgow added up to an incident that required his personal attendance, and although Lester had been cross about it he hadn’t been able to do anything about it other than warn Liz she’d be on her own in the flat for a couple of days; Liz understood well enough the demands of her father’s job, but she’d been unhappy about it for Jamie’s sake.

 

            “Can you?” Jamie said, sounding highly pleased. “I know he’s really busy and his job’s-“  


            “I can,” Liz said firmly. “Look, Jamie, he didn’t want to miss seeing you, he was so pissed off about it, but the j-“  


            “I know,” Jamie interrupted. There was a pause, then he said: “We never did find out what his job was, did we? Unless he told you.”

 

            “No,” Liz lied, feeling even guiltier; she had, in fact, known for nearly the past year what Lester did for a living, ever since she’d found herself and her friends on the lunch menu of a rogue deinonychus, but she knew she couldn’t tell Jamie about the ARC. “I just know it’s highly secret and Home-Officey and the hours are crap, and we knew that anyway. Look, Jamie, I can’t stay long, this is my lunch-break at school, but do you want me to read to you for a bit?”  


            “Please!” Jamie, successfully diverted, retrieved the sixth Harry Potter from his bedside table and passed it to Liz, who opened it to the right page and drew breath to speak- and then her phone bleeped, Liz leapt a foot in the air and dropped the book, and Jamie burst out laughing.

 

            A nurse hurried over and frowned at them. “We’ll hush,” Jamie promised, and then added, “Liz, what is it?”  


            Liz was staring at her phone and looking very puzzled. The text message was short and to the point: _where r u? fire @ skl. teachers frantic_.

 

            “Who’s it from?” Jamie asked nosily, craning his neck to try and see.

 

            “Juliet,” Liz said absently.

 

            “Your girlfriend? The one you went on D of E with last year?”

 

            “Yeah, only she wasn’t my girlfriend then.” Liz got up. “Jamie, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to go, there’s been a fire at school.” She hugged her brother. “See you soon. Have fun with the sketchbook and stuff. Love you.”

 

            “Bye, Liz.”

 

            Liz walked quickly away, turning at the end of the ward before she pushed open the door to raise a hand to Jamie, who waved in return. Then she left, marched down the corridor and called the lift. Once inside, she phoned Juliet. “Hi Jules?”

 

            “Liz! Where are you?” Juliet sounded excited.

 

            “Hospital. Visiting Jamie. I did tell you.”

 

            “Oh yeah, I remember... just let me tell Miss Vandermeer...” There was a brief silence while Juliet explained Liz’s whereabouts to the irascible Physics teacher. “How’s Jamie?”  


            “No better, no worse. Look, what happened? What fire?” Liz left the lift and turned the corner, heading for the main glass doors to the outside.

 

            “Dunno. Just a fire. We all got evacuated, and the firefighters came, and they’re still in there so we’re being sent home.”

 

            “Crap, are we? I haven’t got my keys. They’re in my jacket in my locker.” Liz leant against a wall; no point going anywhere till she knew where she was going.

 

            “Yeah, I haven’t even got my Oystercard ’cause the whole lot was in my bag. Except my phone, obviously.”

 

            “Lucky, that. D’you want me to come and pick you up and we can catch a movie or something?” Liz suggested, making plans in her head.  She couldn’t go home, not without her keys, and the concierge loathed her and wasn’t likely to lend her the spare set of keys. So, if she killed time in the city, a movie or something- that would be okay- but she’d have to phone Dad to find out when he was getting home- or could she get the keys from Dad herself? Would he mind her turning up at the ARC?

 

            “I’d love to, but I have Maths tutoring,” Juliet said regretfully. “Calculus is evil and only strange people like you can understand it.”

 

            “What, even when the school’s on fire?” Liz wanted to know, surprised.

 

             “Yeah. According to Ed, Maths tutoring stops for no man, beast or d- disaster.”

 

            Liz sighed. “What did he really say? Man, beast or-?”

 

            “Man, beast or dinosaur, actually.” Juliet hesitated. “You know what he’s like.”

 

            “I certainly bloody do,” Liz said grimly. “Damn him, if he doesn’t shut up about it I’ll...”

 

            “Disembowel him?” Juliet suggested.

 

            The other teenager laughed. “That’d be a good start. God, I wish he’d just get over it. Anyway, good luck with the tutoring.”

 

            “Thanks. I’ll need it.”

 

            “You’re not as bad at Maths as you think you are. See you tomorrow, then- oh, wait, are you still coming round after school tomorrow?”

 

            “Yeah.”

 

            “Great. See you then. Bye!”

 

            “Bye!” Juliet ended the call, and Liz tucked her phone away, smiling slightly. Juliet always made her feel more cheerful and nicer towards people in general, even Ed Mackenzie on a dinosaur rampage.

 

            Ed Mackenzie. The smile vanished as she looked around to get her bearings. The boy was six months older than her, and like Juliet, Liz and two of Liz’s friends, had been on the Duke of Edinburgh expedition that had been crashed by a deinonychus. Unlike Mark, Amandeep, or Juliet, Ed had not been willing to believe or at least pretend to believe that it hadn’t been a homicidal dinosaur but a rare kind of carnivorous lizard escaped from a conservation centre. He knew a predatory dinosaur when he saw one, apparently, and he just wouldn’t shut up about it. He was convinced –and he was right- that there was a government conspiracy involved. Of course, he wouldn’t shout from the rooftops that he’d been chased by a prehistoric creature; he wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d be believed, and anyway, he’d signed the Official Secrets Act. But he would hint and throw the word dinosaur into any casual conversation with the others, looking for someone else who thought as he did or trying to inspire them to think as he did, highly irritating Liz until three months ago she’d lost her temper with him. They’d had a row of cataclysmic proportions, both of them yelling themselves hoarse. Luckily, they hadn’t been at school, and Juliet had managed to calm them down, but ever since then Ed had avoided Liz.

 

            It wasn’t as if Liz minded. He had been less and less her friend, ever since the failed D of E expedition.

 

            She glanced around. She was now facing Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament on the opposite side of the Thames to her; since it was a sunny day, the place was heaving with tourists, and Liz sidestepped a large and chattering Japanese party with cameras at the ready and dodged a jovial American family almost on automatic before deciding on her route. If she went right along the waterfront, she would reach the ARC with little fuss and no need to work out bus or Tube routes. It would be a bit of a way, but she liked walking, and it wasn’t as if she was in a hurry: it would give her time to call her father and check turning up at the ARC to filch his keys was all right with him.

 

            Liz elbowed her way through the crowd and found her way down to the waterfront, where she got out her mobile phone again and texted her father. _fire @ skl haven’t got keys can come borrow yours?_ She sent the text, then stuffed the phone back into her rucksack and started to walk briskly along the pavement.

 

***

 

            Sir James Lester did not, on the whole, enjoy budget meetings. They were a necessary evil, and as such he preferred not to have them interrupted, as interruptions usually meant they would be prolonged. Therefore, he was not best pleased when his BlackBerry rang towards the end of one, just when he’d been beginning to tentatively look forward to escaping. Connor Temple ground to a halt in the middle of explaining the latest addition to the anomaly detector, and stared at him.

 

            Lester cursed to himself and retrieved the personal organiser from his jacket pocket, glaring at it. _Liz Lester has sent you a text message at 13:24._ He opened and read it, then rose. “Excuse me,” he said briefly, and went out into the corridor, closing the door gently behind him; a gentle swell of conversation rose as he left.

 

            He stood looking out of the window as Liz’s phone rang and she picked it up. “Hello, Liz. What’s this about a fire at school?... Are you all right? Oh yes, you were with Jamie. Yes, of course I’ll visit him this evening. So who told you about the fire?... I see. As for the keys- yes, you can come to the ARC. Where are you?... All right. Call me when you reach the front of the ARC. Yes, I have a meeting to go back to... no, don’t worry about it; I was bored anyway. See you then. Bye.”

 

            He put the BlackBerry away, but stood looking out of the window for a moment more. Of course, there was no reason why Liz should not come to the ARC. She already knew about it, after all, and she did need the keys. Nor was she one to chatter about it; he could testify to that. Liz had only once brought up the subject herself, and that had been to ask if the ARC had been part of the reason he and her mother had divorced, because he couldn’t tell her about it.  

           

            Lester shrugged. It would be all right.

 

            Then, with a sigh, he turned and went back into the meeting.

 

***

 

            Half an hour later, Liz reached the glass behemoth of modern architecture and looked at it with some trepidation. She wasn’t totally sure she was welcome here.

 

            Swallowing her doubts, she took out her phone and speed-dialled her father.

 

            He didn’t answer. She tried again. Still, there was no answer.

 

            She waited a few more minutes and tried once more, but Lester still did not pick up the phone.

 

            Then, eventually, she headed for the ARC, entered, and went up to the receptionist. “Excuse me. I’m Liz Lester, I’m here to see my father, Sir James Lester. He works here.”

 

            “Why?” the receptionist asked suspiciously, looking at her. The woman had a nose like a hatchet, and reminded Liz very much of the concierge at the block of flats she lived in, who detested her.

 

            “Because I need to borrow his set of keys, I’ve lost mine. I called him and he agreed I could come and get his, and he said to call him as soon as I reached the front of the ARC, but I have and he’s not responding,” Liz said politely.

 

            “You need an appointment to see Sir James,” the receptionist informed her.

 

            “I really don’t think I do. Not given that I’m his own daughter.” Liz chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to disguise her worry and irritation. “If you wouldn’t mind calling up to his office, I’m sure he’d confirm what I’ve said.”

 

            “Sir James is not available.”

 

            “I don’t believe that,” Liz said flatly. “I think he’s just got his phone turned off. S’not the same thing. Please call up to his office.”

 

            With a sniff, the receptionist did so. A secretary answered it, saying that Sir James was not in, and the receptionist smiled at Liz, more than a hint of triumph in her expression. “Fine,” Liz said, annoyed. “I’ll wait here for him, then.”

 

            The receptionist did not stop smiling, but it lost its genuine edge. “I’m afraid-“

 

            “I’m afraid that I have no intention of leaving without either seeing my father or receiving a phone call from him telling me what to do,” Liz told her through gritted teeth, trying to keep a hold on her temper. “I see there are some chairs over there. I’ll go and sit down.”

 

            A woman in a short skirt and admirably high heels hurried past, looking occupied. “Miss Lewis!” the receptionist exclaimed with undisguised relief, causing the woman to execute a sharp about-face. “This young woman claims to be Sir James’s daughter and wishes to see him.”

 

            “Miss Lewis?” Liz enquired hopefully. She thought she remembered a Miss Lewis, battering Ed into temporary submission with cold logic and public relations half-truths not long after the encounter with the deinonychus. “I think we met before. There was an accident involving a dinosaur and a Duke of Edinburgh group, and I was in the Duke of Edinburgh group.”

 

            Recognition bloomed on the woman’s face. “Oh yes. Elizabeth, isn’t it?”

 

            “Liz,” Liz corrected.

 

            “-Liz, then. Yes, I remember. I’m afraid Sir James is not here at the moment, he’s in a meeting with the Ministry of Defence. Is there a problem? It will need to be quick, I’m in rather a hurry-”

 

            “I need to borrow his keys to get home,” Liz said quickly. “There was a fire at school and I haven’t got my keys. He might have said, I did phone him, he said he was in a budget meeting.”

 

            Understanding and memory joined the recognition. “Yes, he did say. He asked if I could give you the keys if you appeared, but that was just before he had to leave for the Ministry of Defence and he never gave me the keys... I don’t think he anticipated this.”

 

            “What’s this?” Liz asked, realising that this was a situation with which she could cope. Frantic adult? No problem. Liz was used to frantic adults, or at least extremely busy ones.

 

            “Well-“ Jenny looked doubtful.

 

            “Miss Lewis, d’you remember what happened in that accident last year? I hit a dinosaur over the head with a stick. Since then, nothing surprises me.” This was not entirely true, but it was a convenient white lie, and Liz was not against convenient white lies.

 

            “There’s a pack of troodontids in Salisbury,” Jenny Lewis said; perhaps, at another time, when she was in less of a hurry, she would not have answered Liz’s question, but that was academic. “The military are having knickerfits, and so are a bunch of hippies who may have lost a colleague to them.” She looked hard at Liz. “How good are you at keeping quiet and doing what you’re told?”

 

            “Very. CCF saw to that.” Liz had gone, again, for the convenient white lie; Cadet Sergeants in the Combined Cadet Force, such as herself, did markedly less doing what they were told than ordinary Cadets.

 

            “CCF?.. Tell me later. I think you’d better come with me.” Miss Lewis glanced at her watch and cursed. “Now.”

 

            As Liz followed Jenny down to the car park at a brisk trot, she reflected that it was really quite amazing how fast the woman could run in those horrendous heels.


	2. Chapter 2

            Miss Lewis –Jenny, Liz knew now- drove fast. She was busy negotiating her way through London and onto the M4 in her small blue car at the very edge of the speed-limit, with Liz in the passenger seat.

 

            Liz was beginning to wonder why this was happening. It was impossible to avoid the facts; she was in a car on her way to an anomaly in Salisbury Plain with a public relations expert working for her father, and she had no real useful skills or importance- unless what she’d learned with CCF counted. She supposed it was a hasty decision on Miss Lewis’s part, which the older woman would soon come to regret.

 

            “Why did to have to go home from school?” Miss Lewis asked, braking for a traffic light. “Sir James mentioned that you did, and that was why you needed his keys, but nothing else.”  

 

            “I was at St. Thomas’s Hospital to see my brother, and my girlfriend texted me to say there’d been a fire at school and we all had to go home.” Liz hoped the bit about her girlfriend would pass unnoticed among the rest of the information; she made a point of not being shy about having a girlfriend rather than a boyfriend, but it would be awkward if Miss Lewis turned out to be one of those people who, while not exactly homophobic, had trouble coping with the concept of teenaged girls being attracted to each other.

 

            “Your brother? I didn’t know Sir James had any other children.” If Miss Lewis had been surprised by the reference to Juliet, she didn’t show it.

 

            “I have two brothers, Jamie and Nicky, but I was visiting Jamie. They live with my mother. Mum and Dad are divorced.” Liz glanced out of the window as the car moved off again.

 

            “I hope Jamie isn’t seriously hurt?” Miss Lewis asked absently, giving an arrogant cyclist the finger as he swooped in front of them.

 

            “He has leukaemia.”

 

            “Oh, I’m sorry.” Jenny immediately felt very embarrassed; the girl had spoken matter-of-factly, but there was no doubt she’d been less than tactful.

 

            “It’s okay. He’s been in remission before, and he will be again. Leukaemia’s quite responsive to chemotherapy... Jamie hates it, though. Makes him puke. Sorry, you probably didn’t want to know all that,” Liz added sheepishly.

 

            “It’s all right. You live with your father, am I right? Away from your brothers?” They reached the motorway.

 

            “Yes. I asked, when Mum and Dad got divorced.” She grinned. “Actually, I demanded. I find Dad easier to cope with than Mum, and I make her cross, too, so... What about you?”

 

            “What about m- _tosser_!” Jenny swore as a prat in a SmartCar overtook them without warning.

 

            “I mean, what about your family. Have you got brothers?” Liz knew she was asking personal questions now, but turnabout was fair play.

 

            “I haven’t got any brothers or sisters, no. I always wanted a little sister.” Jenny changed lane. “I suppose because my cousins were all five years or more older than me, and I didn’t want to be the baby of the family.”

 

            “Really? Nicky seems to quite enjoy it,” Liz commented.

 

            “I was precocious enough to hate it. You mentioned something called the CCF earlier; what is it?” Jenny enquired, taking the conversation off a personal footing.

 

            “The Combined Cadet Force. I’m in the Army section... We do weekends away and stuff. S’fun.” Liz picked absently at a loose thread on her jeans.

 

            “Interesting. Can you read maps?” Jenny felt slightly more pleased with herself than she had before when she’d realised she now had a possibly unreliable civilian child who would probably be useless tagging along, all on account of a random choice made too quickly. She was wary of the SatNav, and someone to navigate would be useful.

 

            “Yes.”

           

            Jenny waved a hand at the glove-box. “There’s a map in there. We’re headed for the village of Westbury.”

 

            “Westbury?” Liz rummaged through the glove-box, found the map and then looked at Jenny, frowning. “That’s near Bath, isn’t it?”

 

            “I... Yes, I think so. Why?” Jenny asked, surprised by Liz’s tone and slowly recalling more about Liz Lester; she’d not only hit the dinosaur over the head with a stick, she’d then made her friends jump into a river to escape the stunned animal.

 

            “My Uncle Theo and Auntie Alison live near there... There’s a white horse at Westbury, isn’t there? Carved out of the chalk?” Liz racked her brains for more knowledge about the area; she had often walked out there with her uncle or aunt or both, usually when walking their dog but sometimes just for fun.

 

            “Yes, there is,” Jenny said, astonished. Possibly Liz would actually be useful- personal knowledge of the area might be handy. “That’s what the hippies- well, they call themselves pagans –were doing around there. There’s a tradition that if you climb down to touch the Westbury White Horse’s eye, you can make a wish and it will come true. It was a large group, with quite a few teenagers in; the older, more serious ones were there for Stonehenge, but the teenagers decided they wanted to go for an early morning stroll up to the white horse. I mean really early morning; it was pretty dark, no-one was around, and they were all tipsy at least. They reached the white horse and one of them was separated from the group and got dragged off by a pack of what they thought were hell-hounds; the rest yelled, screamed, took pictures and wrote a blog entry about it.”

 

            Liz snorted. “Helpful!”

 

            “Yes. I prefer your jump-into-a-river approach, not least because it does less in the way of PR disasters.”

 

            The girl remained silent for a moment, and then said: “So what happened next?”  


            Ooh, she was _sharp_. There wasn’t much physical resemblance to Lester, but Jenny would hate trying to spin half-truths to this girl as much as she would to him; they were both too likely to see through them. “What makes you think anything happened next?”

 

            “You know what they are, more or less. Trudy somethings, you said before. I don’t see how you can have identified them from a bunch of pictures taken in semi-darkness –I just bet it was on a mobile phone with a feeble flash, too- and a description in a blog post that was probably all muddled with Bacardi Breezers or whatever.” Liz shrugged. “So what did happen next?”

 

            “A boy went missing on his way to school by bike. His tracks were found. They looked as if he was trying to shake followers off, and then the bike was found abandoned and marks of a body dragged off.” Jenny’s lips thinned, and she did not say that blood had also been found, and that the likelihood was that Jake Newton was dead.

 

            Liz didn’t need telling that. She fiddled with the map, flipping backwards and forwards and peering out of the window to read the motorway signs and find their place on the map. After a while, she said conversationally: “You know, I looked up dino-knickerless on the Net afterwards. When I... When the nightmares stopped. And I went to the Natural History Museum and looked at the display there. Dino-knickerlesses- I mean, deinonychuses -hunt in packs too, but only one attacked us. We’d have been long dead if there were more of them. Mark at least would be a goner.”

 

            “Mm.” There was nothing you could say to that, really, so Jenny changed the subject. “Where now?”

 

            “Follow the M4 past Reading. Then we leave the M4 at Stanton St. Quintin and go down the A350, and that takes us right to Westbury,” Liz answered.

 

            “Okay.”

 

            They passed the rest of the drive in semi-silence. Occasionally, Jenny asked Liz for more directions, and once a cross man with a Scottish accent rang up on the hands-free and they had a brisk discussion about the Official Secrets Act, which Liz chose to keep quiet during since she’d never actually signed a copy of the thing herself and didn’t want to be made to. The requests for directions grew more frequent towards the end of the journey, until they drew up in the off-road car park near the Westbury White Horse, where Jenny got out. After a moment’s hesitation, so did Liz.

           

            She recognised the set-up- Special Forces soldiers, a few scientists in ordinary clothes, scared civilians, and truculent policemen. It didn’t look like she was going to be much use here, so she just waited by the car, backpack on her back and watching Miss Lewis stride confidently off in those absurd heels and get the measure of the situation. She wondered if she ought to phone Dad, and then decided that a voicemail saying ‘Hi, Dad, I’m in Salisbury Plain with about half your employees chasing dinosaurs’ would not make her father any happier.

 

            After a while, she realised that the soldiers had noticed her, and were eyeing her with some suspicion. She pretended not to have spotted this, embarrassed, until one came over and said: “Excuse me, miss, are you lost or looking for somebody?”

 

            Liz looked at him, and to her shock, recognised him. It was the medic who’d given her the foil blanket and horrible drink after the deinonychus incident, but he evidently didn’t remember her. “Um, no. I’m Liz Lester, I’m sort of here by accident... Miss Lewis brought me. And I do know about the dinosaurs,” she added. “I was attacked by one last year when I was on Duke of Edinburgh.”

 

            “Oh.” He looked highly taken aback. “I see.”

 

            Liz flushed. “I know I’m not really supposed to be here. I only meant to borrow my dad’s keys so I could go home, and I... sort of got swept up in things.” She shrugged awkwardly.

 

            “I see,” was all he said, and he went away. Liz stayed red about the face, and shuddered as a gust of wind hit her. She really wished she had her jacket.

 

            Then Miss Lewis came back. “Liz, did you say you knew the area?”

 

            Liz looked up. “A bit. Why?”

 

            “It could be useful, that’s all.” Miss Lewis took a harder look at her, and then her expression softened. “Are you cold?”  


            “Not really,” Liz lied.

 

            Miss Lewis ignored this. “You can stay in the car if you’d like.”  


            “No, I’m... fine, thanks, I like the outdoors and I’m not that cold. Is there anything I could do, though?” Liz asked. “I’m Miss Fifth Wheel right now.”

 

            “Hm,” Jenny said, staring at her in a measuring fashion. “Maybe. I don’t know. I never know. Honestly, these anomalies- I can’t _wait_ till Lester’s pet physicists work out how to predict them... You can go and sit with the team, anyway. I daresay Connor will welcome someone to expound theories at, and Abby can probably lend you a jumper.”

 

            “Okay,” Liz said uncertainly, and wandered off in the direction Miss Lewis indicated, towards the large jeep where a bleached-blonde young woman was not listening to a dark-haired, distinctly geeky-looking young man who was gesticulating excitedly, a lap-top on his lap, and an older man was leaning against the bonnet and sulking. “Hi?” she said.

 

            The young man and woman looked up, and the sulker looked around, and Liz smiled slightly, hopefully. “I’m Liz Lester. Miss Lewis sent me here to see if you have a use for me.”

 

            “Liz Lester? I didn’t know Lester had a daughter,” the sulker remarked, apparently astonished.

 

            Liz smiled thinly, foreseeing many similar comments in the near future. “He does. She kind of knows about the dinosaurs, too, so...”

 

            Another hefty breeze blew down the back of her shirt, and she shivered. The bleached-blonde young woman fished around in the back seat of the jeep, and found a red hoodie. “Haven’t you got a jacket, um... Liz?”

 

            “No.” Liz took a deep breath. “You see, what happened was there was a fire at my school and I left my jacket in my locker and it had my keys in. I went to the ARC to try and borrow Dad’s keys so I could go home, but he wasn’t there. The receptionist foisted me on Miss Lewis and... here I am.”

 

            There was a silence, and then, almost apologetically, the blonde handed her the hoodie. Liz smiled gratefully at her and pulled it on; it was warm and comfortable. “Thanks.”

 

            “You can come and sit down if you want,” the blonde offered. “My name’s Abby.”

 

            Abby nudged the geek with her foot. “Oh- er- I’m Connor,” he said, and then went back to his laptop. The man who had been sulking came over and held out his hand to shake; Liz took it.

 

            “Professor Nick Cutter,” he said, and she noted the Scottish accent- he sounded like the man who’d called Miss Lewis in the car. “Just Cutter’ll do.”

 

            “OK,” Liz said. “Everyone calls me Liz.” Connor and Abby shifted to make room for her, and she sat. The others seemed to be busy, so she took out Jamie’s sketchbook, which was still in her bag, and started to look through it more carefully.

 

            She only discovered that Abby and Connor were looking over her shoulder when Connor, tactlessly, exclaimed “My God, is that Lester?” while Liz was lingering over a particularly good portrait from life that must have taken two or three sittings and considerable work outside of that time for Jamie to complete.

 

            As Abby kicked Connor and hissed an admonition, Liz blinked and stared hard at the picture, trying to work out what about the portrayal was so unusual. Yes, Dad was smiling, and it was the special quiet one he saved for moments when he was genuinely content, but people who didn’t know him were unlikely to appreciate the difference between that and his more ordinary, all-purpose smile. The sardonic one, of course, was a different kettle of fish entirely- in fact, Lester had a veritable arsenal of facial expressions, among which smiles featured quite heavily, so Liz was not totally sure why the idea of him smiling was so odd.

 

            She squinted at it. Possibly his hair was ruffled weirdly?

           

            “But he’s smiling!” Connor hissed in a tone he thought was subtle.

 

            “So what if he’s smiling?” Liz demanded, perplexed. “He often smiles.”

 

            “He doesn’t!” Abby was kicking, jabbing and poking harder and harder in an effort to make Connor shut up, but he seemed impervious, caught up in the debate.  


            “Yes he does!” Liz frowned at Connor.

 

            “Maybe at you, but not at us he doesn’t!”

 

            “Probably you annoy him!”

 

            Connor squeaked indignantly, and then yelped as Abby finally lost her temper and thumped him in earnest.

 

            Professor Cutter, who had been looking away from the developing argument, uninterested in watching Connor get into a fight with Lester’s teenaged daughter, saw Jenny get a call while in the middle of intimidating the local constabulary that made her face go blank and then anxious. “I think we have a problem.”

 

            Jenny disposed of the senior policeman with a few well-chosen words and hurried over to them. “A pack of Girl Guides supposedly on a hike are missing half a mile from here. These troodontids are popping in and out of anomalies like Tube stations! Liz- oh, there you are -Cutter, drive or I will!”

 

            “What?” the professor demanded, though he got into the driver’s seat quickly enough.

 

            “One of the Girl Guides is a Minister’s daughter, and he was throwing a tantrum about how they’ve vanished without a trace- understandable, but then some stupid policeman let him know that it was something to do with a government operation, and then, of course, he found out he hadn’t the security clearance for it so he is _spitting_ with rage,” Jenny said very fast, doing up her seatbelt.

 

            There was some hurried shuffling in the back seat as Connor, Abby and Liz attempted to sort themselves out without losing belongings, causing offense or tumbling into either the windscreen or the boot, and which ended with Liz and Abby in the window seats and Connor –not without protest- squashed in the middle. “What happened to them?” Abby asked, once they were settled.

 

            “How would I know? I just know it was a patrol (that’s a group of about six, I think) and their leader, and they went on a hike, and should have met up with their parents at the Carrot and Stick two hours ago, but there’s no trace of them and Lieutenant Lyle is worried they may have gone through an anomaly.” Jenny broke off and gave Professor Cutter brusque directions; they were travelling at considerably over the speed limit.

              

            “Why would they go through an anomaly?” Connor said, startled. The question that immediately occurred to Nick was ‘and what was Lieutenant Lyle doing in a pub?’, but he was too busy not crashing into a hedge to ask it, and suspected that Jenny would not appreciate his asking.

 

            “They’re probably bolshie and inquisitive ten-year-olds who don’t like their teacher- well, leader,” Liz answered, feeling this was an area in which she had some expertise. “What I want to know is why they weren’t in school on a school day.”

 

            “Apparently, they came from a boarding school nearby where the Guides and the Scouts are a big part of the curriculum, and every now and then they have a day where all the patrols go out hiking.” Jenny cast her eyes heavenwards. “Which means there are about fifty _other_ children and their teachers wandering around Wiltshire. They’re being called in, but it’s going to take some time for them to get out of danger. Left here!” she snapped.

 

            They came to a screeching halt in front of the Carrot and Stick, followed by a number of Army jeeps, and leapt out to face a number of apoplectic, anxious and officious parents and a headmaster having a nervous breakdown, and all Liz could think about was whether Miss Lewis had meantto leave her car behind.

 

            “-and what is a _teenager_ doing in your supposed _crack squad_ of scientists, Miss Lewis, I should like to know!”

 

            Liz started as the last sentence of the minister’s rant brought her abruptly back to earth again. She scrambled for a lie. “Um, actually, sir, I... I kind of... well...”

 

Inspiration struck like a frying pan to the head, and, acting on it, she tried to look blank and horrified. “You see, I just went out to get some milk and I- oh, God, it was horrible, I found a _corpse_! And these people think the animal they’re looking for killed- killed-” She clapped a hand over her mouth, mumbled, “Excuse me!” and bolted behind the nearest sizeable bush to make the most realistic throwing-up noises she could.


	3. Chapter 3

            “... Ah. Yes. Yes, James, I do know where Liz is... no, I’m sorry, I didn’t give her the keys... You never gave them to me. I found her in the lobby having an argument with the receptionist, so I took her with me. Yes, she- I _am_ sorry, James, and I _will_ ensure her safety, but she seems sensible, she won’t go wandering off the way Nick might.” Jenny winced at what she heard down the phone line, and shifted her weight to lean against the bonnet of the car. James Lester was in fine form, and it sounded like this was going to be a long and painful conversation.

 

 A disembodied voice from behind the jeep Jenny was perching on whispered: “Miss Lewis, is he gone?”

 

“Is who- oh, Liz! I’ve got your father on the phone here! Would you like to speak to him?”

 

Liz took in Jenny’s expression, and then nodded reassuringly and took the phone. “Hi, Dad,” she said briskly. “I promise not to get killed or injured –I swear I won’t even so much as sprain an ankle- but I’m here now, and actually, this is a far more interesting way of spending my afternoon than mouldering about at home, and I was in more danger on Duke of Edinburgh than I ever could be here, the place is drowning in Special Forces. You employ this lot. I seem to remember hearing you say you handpick them. So put a little trust in them and stop harassing Miss Lewis. Love you! Don’t forget to visit Jamie! See you tonight!” She ended the call, and handed the phone back to Jenny, who was sneakily admiring of this performance and trying to hide it. “There, he won’t bother you any more.”

 

“I- er- I don’t know if I should thank you,” Jenny said, looking rapidly down at the phone and up again at Liz, as if she was astonished to see it.

 

Liz grinned mischievously. “Thank me. It never hurts.”

 

Jenny grinned back. “Thank you, then.” She sobered. “Now, I think you can be very useful.”

 

Liz frowned; Jenny’s tone alerted her to something wrong. “What’s happened?”

 

“One of the missing girls has turned up,” Jenny said quietly.

 

“Alive or dead?” Liz asked instantly.

 

            “She’s alive, just scratches and bruises, but hysterical whenever anyone tries to interview her- all but gibbering. She’s about three years younger than you. Do you think you can?...” Jenny trailed off, wondering if the girl was capable of this. She supposed she would just have to trust her, and really, someone needed to talk to that child.

 

            “Talk to her? I’ll try. Who is she? Where is she?” Liz said, mind running off with practicalities and plans.

 

            “She’s not the minister’s daughter, thank God.”

 

            Liz smiled slightly, evidently waiting for a proper answer. Jenny relented. “Her name’s Rhona Davies; her parents are diplomats in Cairo. She’s currently sitting in the bar, wearing a foil blanket and watching the windows like they’re going to bite her.”

 

             “Don’t blame her.” Liz heaved a deep sigh, and scrubbed a hand through her hair.

 

            “If it-“

 

            “It’s not too much bother or too much trouble, Miss Lewis, I’m just thinking about how,” Liz answered before Jenny had finished the question.

 

            “I think Jenny will do.”

 

            Liz smiled properly. “Okay. Jenny.” She ditched the hoodie and the backpack in the back of the jeep, extracting her purse and her mobile phone from the bag before heading casually for the Carrot and Stick, selecting her Aunt Alison’s number from the phonebook and calling it before meandering on at a leisurely pace, talking fairly loudly.

 

            “Oh, hi, Auntie. No, nothing’s wrong... No, Jamie’s not any worse, don’t worry. Yes, dad’s fine. How’s Uncle Theo?... Oh, good. Is his knee better?”

 

            Nick appeared. “Jenny, what the hell is she _doing_?”

 

            “I have no idea,” Jenny muttered.

 

            Liz was perfectly aware of the consternation and irritation she was causing, but that was fine. She wanted the Girl Guide, what’s-her-name, Rhona, to hear her coming and hopefully feel safer. She ambled slowly up to the pub, ignoring the stares she was gathering, and then stepped inside, making sure to knock over a row of umbrellas and swear in a reassuringly human fashion. She had more confidence than Jenny would have expected; she’d had to have a quiet discussion with an unfortunate young cadet who had started her period on CCF camp, and that surely beat everything that could possibly happen for awkwardness.

 

            The Carrot and Stick was a gastropub, with a menu on good paper up by the door and specials written on blackboards. Everything was polished and there was a distracted woman by the bar.

 

            “Are you sure you don’t want anything, pet?” she was saying to a girl sitting hunched on a stool, dressed as if for the outside, muddied and scratched, although someone had cleaned her up a bit. Possibly a hose had been involved.

 

            “Hello?” Liz called, pretending not to have seen anyone, and then ‘caught sight’ of the woman and the girl and said cheerfully “Oh hi!” with her most welcoming smile and nicest upper-class accent. Now was not the time to be snarky or shy.

 

            She wandered over, being sure to keep a decent distance from the girl Rhona, and smiled again at the woman. “Excuse me, ma’am, are you the landlady?”  


            “Yes. Yes, I am.” The woman straightened and smoothed her shirt. “Er, I’m sorry, miss, I can’t help you-“

 

            “I’m with that lot out there. Don’t ask, it’s a long story!” Liz pulled a comical face. “Can I have a Coke, please?” Liz asked the landlady, still smiling, holding her purse in one hand. “-And- Christ, kid, you look like you need something,” she said kindly, using her talking-to-scared-eleven-year-olds voice. “D’you want a drink? What would you like?”

 

            “Water, please,” Rhona Davies whispered. She wasn’t much over eleven, as it happened; a tiny thing for her age, too. She had hazel eyes, and she was still trembling with fear.

 

            “Sparkling or still?” Liz questioned.

 

            “Still, please.” The whisper raised a bit. Liz looked up at the landlady and put on the friendly smile again.

 

            “One Coke and one still water, please.”

 

            Looking slightly shell-shocked, the woman did as she asked. Liz went over to the till and paid for the drinks without satisfying the burning curiosity the woman was evidently beginning to feel, and took the water over to Rhona, sipping her own drink as she did so.

 

            Rhona took the drink from her with shaking hands, but didn’t spill any. “Thank you,” she said in a stronger voice. “I’ll pay you back.”

 

            “Don’t worry about it. Seriously, you look like you need it. What’s your name?” Liz asked.

 

            “Rhona,” Rhona answered.

 

            “I’m Liz,” Liz introduced herself. “And I’m not going to ask you to say anything, but I want you to listen, okay?”

 

             Rhona looked sharply at her.

 

            “Yeah,” Liz said softly, jerking her head at the open door. “I’m with them. Don’t ask, it is _such_ a long story. Okay. Do you know what Duke of Edinburgh is?”

 

            Rhona sniffled, wiped her nose with her finger and nodded, looking at her.

 

            “Well,” Liz said, still talking quietly, “last year I was on Duke of Edinburgh and my group was attacked by something kind of like something I just bet attacked your group of Guides t- jeez!”

 

            Rhona’s muscles had spasmed involuntarily, and she had almost dropped her glass; cold water slopped over its sides.

 

            “I think we should maybe put that down,” Liz suggested. Rhona put it aside obediently, but she was visibly more frightened than she had been before.

 

            “I- I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

            “You don’t have to,” Liz said soothingly. “Just look at me, okay? I’m here, aren’t I? Alive and well?”

 

            Rhona nodded, looking rather perplexed.

 

            “See? I survived. You survived. It’ll be okay, Rhona, I promise, but we need to help the others ’cause they’re still lost. Can you tell me how you got here?” Liz really hoped this would not bring on another fit of the fight-or-flight reflex.

 

            Rhona hesitated, then nodded again, more slowly. “I- I was running- and I tripped- and I fell and it was cold for a moment, like running through a wall of water, and I got up again and I started running  ’cause they get you if you fall and then I realised I was in school-“

 

            “ _Fuck_!” Liz breathed. _In the actual fucking_ school _?_ she thought, horrified.

 

            The girl shot her a startled look, and she plastered the reassuring smile back on again. “Sorry. Carry on, Rhona.”

 

            Rhona took a deep breath that cracked a bit with a sob. “-and-and I ran to the Nurse’s office and I- I- told her-“ She started crying.

 

            “Told her what, Rhona?” Liz said insistently.  


            “I told her- I told her- Sally’s dead!” the girl sobbed, collapsing into a fit of crying.

 

            “Okay,” Liz said. “Okay.” She put an arm around the girl carefully.

 

            “The- the- the things, they took her down and the- they-“

 

            “It’s okay, Rhona, you don’t need to tell me, I know,” Liz said as the younger girl clung to her, weeping furiously. _So what now?_ Looking down at the top of the girl’s head, it seemed obvious some adult more fit to deal with this kind of thing ought to take charge right now. Possibly sedation? Liz thought wildly to herself. Dreamless sleep might help. She knew it would have helped her after the dino-knickerless incident, when the nightmares had seemed endless and she’d woken up screaming. “Okay, come with me now.”

 

            Her Coke had been set aside for some time, and now she got up off the bar stool she was sitting on and half-lifted the other girl; they stumbled out into daylight together. Liz looked around quickly, but Miss Lewis was nowhere to be seen and this wasn’t her field anyway, but luckily the appropriate people spotted her rather than the other way round. The medic from before hurried over. “Shock?” he asked, looking at the girl. He evidently hadn’t treated her before; Liz wondered who had. “What happened?”  


            “I have no clue, and I think she saw a friend torn to pieces,” Liz muttered, helping Rhona, still sobbing, over to a stretcher. “Okay, Rhona, now I’m going to leave you here, if that’s okay,” she said louder, asking herself what it was about the word ‘okay’ that made it so handy in a crisis. “Look at me now. Look at me now.”  


            Rhona looked at her. “You’re safe, okay, Rhona? You’re safe. Okay?”

 

            Rhona nodded, and then burst into fresh tears. Liz hugged her briefly, and then fled, leaving the medic to cope with her.

 

            “Jenny! Jenny!” she yelled as soon as she was a little way away from the girl.

 

            “-Yes, Liz, _what is it_!” Jenny sounded annoyed to have been interrupted; she was talking quietly to a stern soldier with short dark hair. “I was busy-“

 

            “Not any more,” Liz said grimly. “I got Rhona to talk and she said when she got away she found herself running through something that made her cold, like running through a sheet of cold water. Have you ever been through an anomaly? Is it like that?”

 

            “I have,” the soldier said, staring hard at her; she ignored the stare. “Yes. It is like that.”  


            “Well we’re fucked then, because she said that the next thing she knew, she was _at school_. Jenny, there’s an anomaly in a sodding boarding school!”

 

            Jenny stared at her for a moment. “Oh fuck,” she said comprehensively, and dashed off; Liz and the soldier pelted after her and caught up as she seized Connor by the shoulder, demanding he check his portable anomaly detector. Liz grabbed the borrowed hoodie and her backpack, stuffing purse and mobile phone into the bag, yanking the hoodie over her head and slinging the bag over her shoulder. She ran over to Jenny just as Connor’s anomaly detector, which hadn’t been checked for some time due to Connor’s attempts to properly identify the unspecified troodontids, confirmed what Rhona had said. Jenny swore, started for her car and swore again.

 

            So leaving it behind _had_ been a mistake, Liz thought.

 

            And so, for the second time in as many hours, they all piled into the scientists’ jeep and hared off towards another anomaly.

 

***

 

            _Redwood House School, Day and Boarding, Headmaster Mr. Aaron Harrington_ , read the sign as the jeep crunched over gravel through open ironwork gates and stopped. Doors popped open and occupants shot out, staring at the gracious cream-coloured buildings, where there was absolutely no sign of upheaval or nasty little dinosaurs whatsoever.

 

            Liz stared for a moment longer, looking for any sign of life. The school appeared to be almost totally empty; it seemed nearly everyone was out enjoying outdoor shenanigans with the Girl Guides or the Boy Scouts.

 

            Then they heard the sound of running, and a girl perhaps eleven years old flew out of a building and clattered along the gravel –Liz winced; the child was wearing a straw boater- but she wasn’t screaming, she was laughing, and another girl shot after her, yelling gleefully. They stopped to look at the cars drawing up and disgorging members of the Special Forces, but it wasn’t long before one shrieked “Tag! You’re It!” and the other yelped and chased after the shrieker at high speed.

 

            Connor shook his head, as if to clear it, and blinked at the girls’ disappearing figures. Jenny watched them go, stunned, and then turned to Liz. “You’re sure?...”

 

            “I’m sure,” Liz said flatly. “Rhona was in pieces, but she was quite clear about that. Something like cold water, and then she was at school. Jenny?”

 

            “What?”

 

            “Is that a garden shed over there?”  


            Jenny looked in the direction Liz waved an arm at. There was, indeed, a squat grey shed there, a couple of tasteful and prickly-edged dark ferns in large pots beside it to try and stop it being an eyesore. “Probably. Why?”

 

            “You find all sorts of usefully lethal things in garden sheds, that’s why,” Liz told her, starting out for it in a determined fashion. “My aunt terrifies badly-behaved pupils with stories of her garden shed and keeps it double-locked. I doubt this lot do.”

 

            “No breaking and entering!” Jenny shouted after her in a vaguely admonishing fashion.

 

            “What do you think the pot plants are for?” Liz bellowed back without turning.

 

            Jenny gave up on dissuading her, and waved a hand at a couple of soldiers. “Keep an eye on her for a moment, will you? I doubt the anomaly’s in a garden shed, and any dinosaurs would probably have broken through the door, but...”

 

            The soldiers nodded, and caught up with the girl, who was bending over and fishing through the sharp leaves of the ferns, with the occasional squeak of pain as she acquired the leafy equivalent of a papercut. Liz straightened, sucking her wounded fingers and brandishing a key, which she stuffed into the padlock on the shed and turned with a flourish. “Bingo,” she said with satisfaction, and then noticed that the soldiers had guns pointed at the inside of the shed and frowned. “It’s a _shed_.”

 

            “It’s an unsecured location in a possibly dangerous area,” was the bland retort. Liz considered the neatly delivered phrase, conceded the argument with an inelegant shrug, and trotted over the threshold.

 

            The shed was utterly devoid of murderous troodontids, but it did contain rather a lot of interestingly dangerous gardening implements. The soldiers watched as Liz rifled through hedge-trimmers, lawn-mowers, secateurs, shears, and other such things, before lighting on something that looked like a long metal tube with a plastic hand-grip and a gas-bottle on one end with a frighteningly pleased grin. “Perfect!”

 

            “And what’s that, miss?” one of the soldiers asked, eyeing it doubtfully.

 

            “It’s a weed-killer,” Liz explained, leaving the shed and locking it tidily behind her. She put the key back –with a hiss and a curse for the sharp leaves- and started back off towards Jenny. “It’s like a Bunsen burner on the end of a metal stick, look.” She flicked a switch, and a blue flame burst roaring into life at the end of it.

 

            The soldiers exchanged glances. They’d heard that this kid was Sir James’s daughter, but neither of them could visualise Sir James casually brandishing the vengeful gardener’s answer to persistent weeds like it was a toy broom.

 

            Liz paid them no attention, but caught up to Jenny and her escort of scientists and watchful soldiers. “New toy,” she said briefly, and demonstrated the weed-killer again.

 

            Jenny stopped short, staring at it. “What do you need _that_ for?”

 

            “It’s an improvement on the stick I used last time,” Liz said, suddenly a lot grimmer. “There are more of these troodontids than there were deinonychus, and I am not going to be caught short. I had enough of that last time.”

 

            “Oh,” was all Jenny said, and together they moved forward, towards the open entrance of the school.


	4. Chapter 4

“So if there’s an anomaly with troodontids coming through it,” Connor demanded, “why no screaming?”  


            “They’re not here yet,” Liz guessed.

 

            Nick frowned. “But the kid –Rhona- she was running and she was alone and panicked. Troodontids would surely have gone for her if she’d become separated from the group.”           

 

            Liz had an answer for that too. “She told me a girl called Sally is dead- she said they ‘took her down’ _._ Maybe they didn’t chase the group of girls yet because they already had something and they knew they could get more- the kid on the bike, the hippy girl –so they let the Girl Guides go and tire themselves out running. Rhona must have got separated from the group afterwards.” She paused, and replayed her words in her head. “I’ve been watching too much _Planet Earth_.”

 

            “You didn’t tell me a girl had been killed!” Jenny exclaimed.

 

            “I was a bit preoccupied, what with the hysterical pre-teen and the anomaly in a boarding school!” Liz defended herself.

 

            “You did say Sally?” Jenny wanted to know.  


            “Yes, Sally,” Liz confirmed, a touch irritated.

 

            Jenny thought back. She’d been given the names of the six missing girls, but there had been two Sallys. “It could be Sally Horton or Sally Warminster.”

 

            “Yay. What happens now?” Liz asked. She didn’t know the team’s routine, but she did notice that Jenny had stopped a few metres short of the steps up to the open doors while the scientists and a number of the soldiers moved on and others spread out. Orders seemed to be being communicated.

 

            “I wait at the perimeter, normally,” Jenny said. “And observe developments and make up lies as required. My field is PR, not basilosauruses.”

 

            Liz gave her a very odd look. “If I’ve been watching too much _Planet Earth_ , you’ve been overdoing the _Walking With Beasts_.”

 

            “Possibly,” Jenny said, peering after Nick as he vanished into the boarding school. “I think we should retreat to the jeeps. And please don’t go anywhere. Your father will have me skinned if you get mauled.”

 

            The teenager scowled as they retraced their steps to the black cars. “Nobody said anything like this _last_ time.”

 

            “There’s a difference between encountering a predatory dinosaur by mistake and actually going to find one,” was the answer, and then Jenny spotted a battered Ford Escort driving up and disgorging four snappily dressed reporters, but happily no camera crew- though an approaching minivan suggested that their arrival was imminent. “Oh sod. Journalists. What do you want to bet the minister called them in?”

 

            “Nothing,” Liz said dryly. “Don’t mind me. I’ll go and sit in a jeep.”  


            “Okay,” Jenny said absently, eyes trained on the journalists. “And put away the weedkiller.  Oh, and accept no interviews!”

 

            “Yes’m,” Liz answered obediently as Jenny headed implacably for the curious posse of journalists, who had just discovered a phenomenon known as the Military Stonewall, and were about to discover the phenomenon known as Jenny in PR mode, which was, if anything, even more frightening. Liz slung the weedkiller over her arm, assumed an innocent expression and slouched over to the scientists’ jeep, where she opened a door and sat down, leaving the door open in order to better see what happened. She pulled out Jamie’s sketchbook again and started to look through it again, starting from the point where she’d previously been interrupted- it was a rather thick sketchbook, and she kept seeing new things in the pictures every time she looked at them.

 

She came across a depressingly medical picture of an IV in a hand –Jamie must have been feeling very bored and rather morbid- and shut it hurriedly, a sharp spike of aversion lancing through her stomach. She wasn’t interested in the sketchbook if it was going to make her think of how sick her brother was, not now. Besides, she had a sneaking feeling that someone was going to collar her and start asking questions Jenny wouldn’t want her to answer: one of those journalists had given her a very funny look. Liz didn’t want to repeat her dive-behind-a-bush-and-pretend-to-vomit performance; apart from anything else, there weren’t any convenient bushes, so she’d better start thinking up a lie.

 

            A journalist drew up inconspicuously while Jenny was bamboozling the other reporters and a stubborn cameraman, glanced round from the relative anonymity of his car, noted Jenny, and then spotted the teenaged girl in the red hoodie, sitting in a jeep well away from Jenny. He got out, being careful not to attract too much attention to himself, and thanked his lucky stars that Miss Lewis was at present cutting the obnoxious cameraman down to size and providing a lovely distraction for him.

 

            Mick Harper was an investigative journalist by trade, and his interest had been piqued by the appearance of what Miss Lewis had told him was a Colombian hairless mammoth. Obviously, it was nothing of the sort, but Mick was fascinated, and not just by the length (or lack thereof) of Miss Lewis’s skirt; he’d turned up at several other similar incidents, and met Miss Lewis several other times, but he still couldn’t get a whiff of the truth he knew was out there.

 

            He crunched quietly over to the girl, who looked up as his shadow fell over her. “Excuse me, miss, might I ask you a few questions?”

 

            “Well, I suppose you can,” Liz said, honing her accent to a fine upper-class edge, so she sounded like a girl who went to Benenden and played hockey and lacrosse, and making herself sound dubious, which wasn’t hard given that she was worried she was over-doing the accent and he wouldn’t fall for it. “I don’t know what’s going on, really.”

 

            “Thank you anyway, miss. I’m Mick Harper, investigative journalist, and you are?...” He let his voice trail off with an enquiring lift of his eyebrows.

 

            “Lisa,” Liz lied without hesitation, wishing her ideas for lies had included a surname. “I go to school here.”

 

            “Oh? Why aren’t you in school, then, if you don’t mind me asking?” Mick asked, noting the name. Lisa.

 

            “I was sick. I’ve been recovering at home for the past three weeks. I’m not looking forward to catching up at all,” Liz complained, getting into the swing of things.

 

            “Oh dear. Not infectious, I hope?” Mick enquired solicitously.

 

            “Very,” Liz said, seeing Jenny approaching with a furious expression on her face. “That’s why I had to go home- after I’d been to the doctor, of course –and I was practically quarantined after I realised how badly I was sick.”

 

            “Bad luck. How did you come to be here, then?” Mick couldn’t see Jenny, but the eyes of the girl he thought was Lisa had flickered sideways for a moment, so it was a safe bet that she was coming. He decided to brazen it out.

 

            “Well,” Liz began, “I was at the train station, you see, and I thought I was going to be picked up by my form tutor, but she’s not here and some people I don’t know came- they had a note from the Headmaster saying it was all right, so I went with them... and they keep getting my name wrong,” she added plaintively, just as Jenny appeared, “you’d think they’d remember it’s Lisa not Li- oh! Miss Lewis! I-“

 

            “That’s quite all right, Lisa,” Jenny said, injecting steel into her tone and smiling at Mick Harper. “I just need a word with Mr. Harper here. If you wouldn’t mind.” She steered Mick Harper briskly away, and had a word with him that ended in Mr. Harper flinging his hands up in frustration, shaking an infuriated finger at Jenny and driving away at a fair pace.

 

            Jenny came back to Liz. “What was that about, _Lisa_?”  She looked amused, not angry, Liz noted with relief. She’d expected a homily about the stupidity of talking to journalists.

 

            “Me coming back to school.” Liz put her upper-class accent and best innocent face on. “I’ve been ill. Three weeks at home, highly infectious, waited at the platform for my teacher, you turned up instead with a note from the Headmaster.”  


            Jenny nodded appreciatively. “That’s not bad. I can have that corroborated quite easily. Did you think that up on the spur of the moment? I’m impressed.”  


            “Well, no,” Liz admitted. “I thought of it before. Can I go and find somewhere quieter?”

 

            Jenny bit her lip, remembering some of the sarcasm Lester had favoured her with earlier before Liz had disposed of him, which had included many threats along the lines of ‘if you endanger my daughter, I’ll...’. “Would you mind staying where you are?”

 

            “Sure. Not at all. I’m not keen on meeting the trudy-whatsits,” Liz said with a shrug, although she suspected this meant she was going to be sitting in the car, bored half to death, for a very long time. She didn’t want to become like the boy dragged off his bike, or the girl snatched near Westbury, and she still had vivid memories of the dino-knickerless tearing at Mark’s skin.

 

            “Good,” Jenny said with heartfelt relief, and hurried off to round up another inconvenient journalist.

 

            Liz settled in for the long haul, and wondered about going to sleep. However, it was not to be; to everyone’s considerable astonishment, a boy came flying round the corner of the main building, eyes wild with fear, his school uniform askew, spotted Liz’s red hoodie and shot in the direction of someone who looked human and safe. “Please, help!”

 

            “Help what? What happened?” Liz demanded, seizing the weed-killer and sliding out of the car.

 

            “It- it’s my friend-“ he grabbed her hoodie and tried to pull her back the direction he’d come from.

 

            Liz detached herself. “Steady on! Tell me what happened to your friend.”

 

            “He’s- he’s hurt!” the boy wailed. “Please!”

 

            “Why did you leave him?” Liz demanded, glancing over the boy’s shoulder and noting thankfully that a few of the soldiers were hurrying towards them.

 

            “Because he couldn’t come and the troodons will come back and eat him if I don’t get help!”

 

            The girl did a double-take, jaw dropping open. “You know what they- oh of _course_ , _dinosaur freaks_ , there’s one in every bloody sch- Oh, hi! He says his friend’s hurt. By troodons.”

 

            The three soldiers sized up the frantic boy and their apparent leader nodded. “Lead on!”

 

            The boy turned and ran back the way he came. The soldiers followed, and so did Liz, round the main building and down a path towards a building that was, according to the boy who still hadn’t introduced himself, some of the girls’ dormitories. “I got him inside,” the boy chattered, made giddy with relief. “I thought he’d be safer there.”

 

            “Clever,” Liz said, a touch snidely, as she got her breath back. “And what were you doing in the girls’ dormitories and why weren’t you out with the Scouts and-“

 

            “What the hell are _you_ doing here?” one of the soldiers demanded to know, staring at her.

 

            Liz flailed the arm holding the weedkiller vaguely, and the nearest squaddie prudently got out of the way; rumour has wings, and the one about Liz’s possession of something like a domestic flamethrower had got around. “He asked me for help.” Then she added: “I’m not going to scream girlishly and run if I see a trudy-whatsit, Do you think Jenny Lewis would have brought me here if I didn’t know about the whole dinosaur thing? Honestly, you get ambushed by a dino-knickerless and- you totally did not hear that, Mister I Sneak About In The Girls’ Dorms.” She scowled ferociously at the boy, who was staring saucer-eyed at her. “Where’s your friend, anyway?”

 

            “Right this way!” the boy said, and led them through a glass door which had a coded lock, past a cheerful common room with a TV in the corner and DVDs splattered across the floor, and to a set of stairs with no outside windows, a choice made presumably to prevent the troodontids entering and consuming the unfortunate boy half-sitting, half-lying on the floor.

 

            He was about Jamie’s age, with dark hair and dark eyes like Jamie, and though that was where the resemblance ended, the sight of him there so ghostly white with blood seeping sluggishly from wounds on his arm and side twisted Liz’s heart. She knelt beside him on the untouched side, while one of the soldiers knelt on the other side, talking quietly to the boy and trying to ascertain the depth and severity of the injuries. The other two were busy keeping watch, so Liz spoke to the other boy, who was fidgeting anxiously. “How many of them were there? It was lone, right? It must’ve been, or I hate to break it to you but you’d be trudy-whatsit food by now.”

 

            “Troodon,” the uninjured boy corrected automatically.

 

            “S’what I said,” Liz informed him untruthfully.

 

            “No, you-“

 

            “Shut up and answer the question!” Liz ordered, losing patience.

 

            The boy gave in. “It was lone,” he answered. “Which is weird, because troodons are supposed to be pack hunters.”

 

            “Whatever,” Liz dismissed. “So how did he get injured?”  


            He took a deep breath. “Well, you see, we were... um...”

 

            “Trying to get into the girls’ dorms, yes, moving on,” Liz said impatiently.

 

            “And this thing came out of the bushes so we ran because it was... toothy.” The boy shivered. “Only Al can’t run very fast because he sprained his ankle, that’s how he got out of the hikes today and the teachers said I could stay with him. The troodon sliced him a bit and I threw rocks at it, and I got it square in the eye, and it sort of howled and ran away.”

 

            “Okay. You don’t play cricket, by any chance?” Liz asked.

 

            “Yes. Why?”

 

            “No reason. Just wondering if you blinded it. Cricketers bowl very fast,” Liz said absently, watching the soldiers’ faces as they collected to confer. “Look, you stay with your friend and talk to him, okay, I need a word.”  


            The three men were farther down the corridor, just out of earshot of the boys. Liz wandered casually up, and coughed tactfully: the one nearest her turned on her with the speed of a striking snake, and she only just managed to prevent herself leaping backwards.

 

            “That reminds me,” the man said. “Who are you anyway?”  


            “I thought the rumour mill took care of the introductions,” Liz sighed –this was getting tiresome- and then said: “I’m Liz Lester. Yes, Sir James’s daughter. No, Dad didn’t tell me about the anomalies randomly; I was out on Duke of Edinburgh last year and my group were attacked by a lone dino-knickerless. I can’t remember the proper name, but it had a lot of teeth and it nearly killed one of my friends. I’m here by accident. Ask Miss Lewis for the full story if you want it.”

 

            The soldier gave her a hard stare, but Liz was unfazed; despite the weaponry, he had nothing on Dad’s hard stare, and she’d faced that for fifteen years. She folded her arms and gave one back, and after a few unpleasant moments, she felt a slight release in the tension.

 

            “Definitely Sir James’s daughter,” a brown-haired soldier Liz had only just realised was female said with a grin.

 

            Liz pulled a face. “Why does everyone think my dad’s so nasty? He’s perfectly nice to me. Oy, didn’t I tell you to look after your friend?” she added sharply to the boy, who had come up behind her.

 

            “We’ve got a right to know what’s going on,” the boy said stubbornly, not budging.

 

            Liz’s face took on an expression very similar to that of Sir James Lester confronted with the bill for removing unidentified-ceratopsid brains and associated fluids from one of the ARC jeeps. “I _don’t_ think so.” She turned back to the soldiers, completely ignoring both the boy and the fact that in his place she would also have tried to find out what was happening, and waited for the boy to go away. A huff and the noise of someone moving away told her he was gone.

 

            “Right,” one of the soldiers –none of them had told Liz their names- said in a business-like fashion. “That kid’s bad. Someone has to go for medical help, and someone has to stay here with them. I think you ought to stay with the boys, ki-“  


            “-Liz-“

 

            “-Liz,” the soldier finished.

 

            Liz nodded. “Fine. Can the hurt one be moved?”            

 

            The one who seemed to be the best at dealing with medical crises compressed his lips. “If necessary, but I think he’ll faint if he has to walk, so best not.”

 

            Liz nodded again, and began to retreat towards the boys; a certain amount of rough first aid had been performed, but the hurt boy looked very weak. “Okay then.”

 

            As she walked away, she became aware that another whispered discussion was going on behind her, but didn’t try to find out what it was about; she suspected she would know soon. Sure enough, someone hurried over and joined her; the soldier with more understanding of medical matters. (Liz wished they would just tell her their names; labelling them ‘medic-type person’ or ‘brown-haired woman’ was tiresome even in her mind.) “Are you staying?” she asked, and he nodded, before going to see to the injured boy again.

 

            Liz watched the other two soldiers go, and thought she’d never seen anything that better fit the phrase ‘armed and dangerous’, except possibly the more inept cadets at CCF camp, and they weren’t dangerous on purpose; these two were, and they were a thousand times more menacing than any horror movie. Then she squeezed the rubber hand-grip of the weed-killer for reassurance and chewed on her lip nervously until she realised she was doing it, when she exerted her self-control and forced herself to stop.

 

            A consequence of watching _Planet Earth_ the night before had been that she had taken in a certain amount of information on deadly predators, such as the fact that they were often attracted to the scent of blood; it was an adaptation to help them hunt. Liz was no Sherlock Holmes, spotting tell-tale clues the size of a stamp here, there and everywhere, but nor was she blind and there was blood all down the corridor, from where the boys had limped  and the injured one had lain down.

           

            Liz wondered exactly how good a sense of smell a trudy-whatsit had.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Bloody Nightmare is based on my own knowledge of Things You Should Definitely Not Put A Match To, Ever, and only exists in theory as I am not stupid enough to try to make it. It is extremely dangerous. Do not try this at home! Really! If you must indulge in experiments of an explosive kind, stick to Coca-Cola and Mentos!

Ten minutes later, the soldier –who still hadn’t told Liz his name- sent Liz to go and look out through the glass doors and see if anyone was coming. He was still keeping a very close eye on the injured boy –Al, apparently- and the other boy, whose name was Oliver, was hovering and being unhelpful.

 

            Quietly, weed-killer at the ready in one hand and a bottle of highly flammable surgical spirit in the other, Liz slipped down the corridor and peered carefully around the corner. Her heart plummeted down to her shoes, and she shifted back into the corridor a bit and pressed herself into the wall, forcing herself to breathe slowly.

 

            There wasn’t _one_ troodontid outside. There were _six_ of them. The first troodontid, annoyed by Oliver’s accurately-flung barrage of rocks, had buggered off to fetch help and returned with all its mates, or so Liz’s theory went.

 

            They were smaller than the deinonychus, that was one consolation, but it wasn’t much of one. The glass was thick, but not that thick. How long before they managed to smash it?

 

            Liz imposed calm on herself. Panicking now would not help- no, really, it wouldn’t. Drawing attention to herself would not help either, so she inched silently down the corridor until she judged she was far enough away to walk faster.

 

            The soldier looked up briefly as she returned, looked down at the bandage he was checking again and then he looked sharply up at her again, as his brain processed the look on her face. She was white-lipped and pale-faced; her hands clutched the bottle of surgical spirit and evil flamethrower thing she called a weed-killer till the knuckles were white, the skin stretched tight over them. “There are six of the little fuckers out there,” she announced, her voice devoid of emotion.

 

            He swore. “Well isn’t it our lucky day.”  


            Liz smiled: that is to say, all her teeth were bared. The soldier guessed she was running on a combination of adrenaline and fear, and thanked God that she seemed to be the kind of person who chose fight over flight. “Isn’t it _just_. Do we go upstairs?”

 

            “I reckon. Come on, Al, mate, I need you on your feet. No, Oliver, don’t touch his injured side. Just go upstairs and find a room with a solid lock on the door. Liz, help me,” the soldier ordered.

 

            Oliver ran upstairs, glad to be allowed to get further away from the troodontids.

 

            “No, Oliver, wait!” Liz said, with a hissed ‘sorry!’ to the soldier, “are there any other staircases?”

 

            The boy paused, thinking, then shook his head. “No.”

 

            “Good. Carry on,” Liz said, and then added quietly for her unimpressed companion, “Just checking.”

 

            “Fair enough.” The soldier jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Have a look and see if that fire-door locks.”

 

            Liz looked around. Sure enough, there was a heavy door that would block off the corridor if shut, but it was open and flush against the wall- probably attached to it by some kind of hook. She went over to it quickly and yanked on the handle; it did not pull away from the wall, so she looked for the hook that was attaching it to the wall. “Gotcha,” she whispered, seeing a brass hook-and-eye arrangement keeping the door open, and fiddled with it for a few moments with hands that shook a bit before she finally managed to release it and let it close, so that it blocked off the corridor with its reassuring thick white-painted wood and strong glass with a wire grid inside, but there was no bolt.

 

            They both heard the thump of troodontid hitting glass door from the end of the corridor, swiftly followed by dimly heard agitated chirping and another thump; upstairs, Oliver heard it too and whimpered. Liz looked over her shoulder at the soldier, who had half-lifted Al and was about to carry him up the stairs. “They’re here,” the soldier said calmly, though Liz could see he was tense.

 

            Liz nodded at the door. “It doesn’t bolt,” she said, trying to match him for calm. “Let’s hope they lose too many braincells bashing their heads against the door to find us.”

 

            This sally earned her a well-done-for-not-panicking smile. “A little help.” Liz came over, stuffed the surgical spirit into a pocket, hooked the weed-killer over her shoulder, and took most of the boy’s weight.

 

            Another thump. Liz saw the soldier hesitate, looking back down the corridor, and said quietly, “Me and Al can get up the stairs on our own.”

 

            He caught her eye and raised his eyebrows. He didn’t even need to say it; _are you sure you can do that?_ was going through Liz’s mind already.

 

            “Can’t we, mate?” Liz said, addressing her words to Al, who nodded weakly.

 

            The soldier nodded, and Liz began to help the boy up the stairs, noticing out of the corner of her eye that he had picked up what looked to her like an extremely dangerous gun. She got Al up to the first floor, noting that there was a good spot on the landing for someone to stand and fire from at any approaching troodontids, and paused to try and change her grip on him: he was heavy.

 

            There was a crash of breaking glass and Oliver’s anxious head appeared from one of the doors along the corridor. “Hurry up!” he pleaded.

 

            “I’m hurrying,” Liz said acidly, and helped Al into a dormitory that redefined the word pink, except for one corner which was plastered in football posters. Together, they managed to stumble to a bed some way away from the door, where Al lay down, pale as paste.

 

            From downstairs, they heard chittering and squawking- presumably the troodontids.

 

            “Why isn’t he shooting?” Oliver said frantically. “They’re out there. Why isn’t he shooting?”

 

            “Probably because he can’t get a clear shot. No point in wasting ammunition,” Liz answered, feeling her heart speed up in fear, thumping against her ribcage, pumping oxygen to all the muscles she would need to run- orfight. And today, it was going to be fight.

 

            She hefted the weed-killer and flicked it on and off a few times for reassurance, then went out and crouched down beside the soldier on the landing. “Why aren’t they here yet?” she wondered aloud.

 

            “The dinosaurs or Lacey and Finn?” was the tense answer.

 

            “Either. Both,” Liz said, filing the names away for future reference.

 

            “I reckon that kid took his injured friend into the common room first, before he realised it had full-length windows. They must be screwing about in there.”

 

            Liz’s heart sank. “There _couldn’t_ have been anyone in there. Could there?”

           

            A quick, reassuring shake of the head. “Nah. We’d have heard screaming by now if there was, and Oliver would’ve roused them earlier to help Al. As for Finn and Lacey, they got back to the perimeter.”

 

            “That begs a question, and the question is this. Why aren’t they here yet then?” Liz didn’t mention that she could see he was wearing a microphone for a radio, so must be in contact with the others unless it was broken, and she rather thought it wasn’t. He knew she knew, too. There was no point lying there.

 

            Silence. Then: “They’re a bit held up.”

 

            Several pieces of the puzzle came together with a satisfying _clunk_ in Liz’s mind: the reason the troodontids seemed to be everywhere at more or less the same time, the reason so many people had been taken- a pack of six could not have taken down and eaten three humans in quick succession, plus however many others they didn’t know about yet who had died. “That’s not the whole lot down there, is it.” It was a statement, not a question.

 

            He shook his head, listening; the troodontids seemed to be having a fine old time in the common room, and then spoke quietly enough that the boys in the room nearby couldn’t hear. “No. There’s a bunch near the nurse’s office, and some others on the path down here, stopping the others getting through.”

 

            The implications of this took a moment to sink into Liz’s brain. “Shit,” Liz breathed. “Ever watched a nature programme?”

 

            “Not often.”  


            “I did. Last night. Lions. And the thing is- well, they made quite a point of it –you can’t have two herds or flocks or prides of predatory things just getting along. They fight for food and stuff. So either it’s different for trudy-whatsits or they’re all from the same pack-type thing. And that makes me think they’re co-ordina-“

 

            A troodontid crashed through the fire-door and the soldier immediately fired, blowing its head off and inspiring a chorus of those squeaking noises the troodontids made.

 

            “Nice,” Liz said appreciatively, and then, almost to herself, “I wonder, are they afraid of fire?”

 

            “How the fuck should I know? Get back in the room and keep those boys from doing anything stupid,” he ordered, apparently considering the time for small talk to be over. Liz obeyed.

 

            Oliver was now as pale as his injured friend, his eyes wide and panicked, and an unpleasant smell and even more unpleasant puddle on the carpet announced that he was so frightened he’d thrown up. Al, however, appeared to have kept the contents of his stomach where God and the school dinner ladies had intended them to be, which greatly relieved Liz. “We’re going to die, aren’t we,” Oliver demanded, voice quavering.

 

            “Don’t be stupid,” Liz said. _That was probably a bit cruel_ , she reflected, _but if I’d said ‘maybe’ he’d’ve had hysterics and if I’d said ‘no’ he wouldn’t have believed me_.

 

            There was a burst of gunfire and some more chittering, but it now sounded triumphant. There was a swearword from outside. Liz recognised this swearword, even though it was not in English; it was a very bad word her Uncle Theo had taught her, and her mother had forbidden her to use in public. She slipped out of the door again.

 

            “I think the bastards have cracked teamwork and strategy,” the soldier said without prompting.

 

            Liz eyed the spray of bullet holes in the wall downstairs and lack of a second corpse, and concluded that the bastards had. “Sod,” she observed.

 

            “Understatement. Get back in that room.”

 

            Liz did as she was told, mind racing. She looked at the boys. Oliver was chewing his thumbnail nervously, and Al looked at her, petrified. “What do we do?” he asked. “What do we _do_?”   

            Mentally, the girl ran through a few dinosaur-destroying possibilities. Fire- no, don’t want to burn the building down around our ears. Gun- haven’t got one, can’t get one, doubt they have a .22 Number 8 Rifle anyway. Explosions- hmm, not such a bad idea. Liz stared around the room, and started to smile. Pillowcases, pillows, aerosols, wire coat-hangers, ribbons, and of course the full bottle of surgical spirit and the weed-killer. She looked at the boys, the smile now a full-blown evil grin. “What do you know about things that go bang?”

 

            “Things that go bang?” Oliver queried, baffled; it seemed that his interest in dinosaurs didn’t extend to other areas of science.

 

            Al managed a small smile, although Liz could see him clenching and unclenching his hands on the bedclothes, and his face was drawn with pain. “Lots.”

 

            “Oh, good.” She cracked the door open. “What would you say to a large explosion?” she asked the soldier.

 

            He thought about it for a few moments, and then there was an upsurge in the troodontids’ ghoulish chittering and three rushed the stairs and Liz hastily shut the door, the rat-a-tat of gunfire ringing in her ears. “Yes please,” was the grim answer from beyond the door. “But keep that damn thing shut while you’re working, don’t blow yourselves up and make the fuse nice and long, okay?”

 

            “Consider it done.” Liz turned to the boys. “Right, let’s do this.”

 

***

 

            “-so there Ditz is, stuck with Lester’s kid, one injured boy, and another who’s not going to be any good, with six bloody dinosaurs bashing down the door!”

 

            “ _I beg your pardon_?” Jenny nearly squawked, forgetting that it wasn’t polite to overhear other people’s conversations, and suddenly remembering that she hadn’t seen Liz since she’d told the girl to stay where she was.

 

***

 

            In the end, the Bloody Nightmare, as Oliver christened it, was a complex and hopefully deadly entity. The framework consisted of a small waste-paper bin, cleared of its contents and lined with three pillowcases instead of the plastic bag that had been holding the rubbish; two holes had been cut in the flimsy plastic of the waste-paper bin using a knife borrowed from Ditzy and a wire hanger, bent thoroughly out of shape, had been threaded through to make a large hook that a curtain rod could slide through, in order to increase the distance between the Bloody Nightmare with its fuse lit and the person dropping it, although it could be thrown if it proved necessary. Inside was an aerosol in the form of someone’s can of deodorant, tissues liberally sprayed with the contents of another can of deodorant and more tissues soaked in surgical spirit, the whole lot wrapped in two more pillowcases and stuffed into the waste-paper basket. The fuse was made of string and led right into the centre; it was also fairly long. As bait to the troodontids, Al had added his t-shirt, which had been so soaked with blood and torn it was a write-off as far as ever wearing it again was concerned, and which had had to be removed before even makeshift bandages could be applied; Liz had given him a duvet to keep warm with.

 

            Liz eyed her creation. It occurred to her that she had, perhaps, let the boys get a little too carried away, but she had no choice. It needed to be effective, and they needed to get rid of the trudy-whatsits now, so they could take Al away to hospital: she was seriously worried about him, because although in the early stages of making the Bloody Nightmare he had been enthusiastic, giving brisk orders and throwing out ideas as if tomorrow would never come- which it might not, if this didn’t work –but now he was listless, watching Liz and Oliver as they finished it off, but speaking little.

 

            With a mental shrug, she carefully slid the curtain-rod under the improvised wire-hanger hook, and nudged the door open. It had been firmly shut for most of the past ten minutes, in which Liz, Al and Oliver had been frantically working and the troodontids had been all but taunting Ditzy, appearing and reappearing at indecent speed. Ditzy’d killed three, but reinforcements had arrived, and there were now nine of the little bastards down there. He was trying to conserve his ammunition, and worrying about when the others would get here and save their sorry arses. And, he thought, glancing over his shoulder at the door, which had been pushed open slightly, the creation of what was probably a lethal home-made explosive right behind him didn’t help.

 

            “Done,” Liz said.

 

            “What’s in it?” Ditzy asked cautiously.

 

            Liz listed the contents. Ditzy nearly choked. “Will that work?” she enquired.

 

            “It’ll probably take out the windows as well as the troodontids. Never mind.” Ditzy took the Bloody Nightmare away from Liz quite firmly, and Liz did not object. “Light the fuse.”

 

            Liz did so, and carefully, Ditzy lowered the Bloody Nightmare. The troodontids, who were now ( _oh, disgusting_ \- Liz felt her stomach revolt) picking at the carcass of one of their comrades, whether to make sure it was dead or eat it was unclear, looked up and chittered at the strange object descending slowly from the place where the will-be-food was. They had huge eyes, and more slim-line heads than the dino-knickerless had had, but they were still too similar for Liz’s peace of mind. Suddenly, the soldier jerked the curtain-rod, sliding the Bloody Nightmare sharply off the other end and flung the curtain rod away; the Bloody Nighmare fell down right among the troodontids. Liz found herself being seized, hustled efficiently into the room, and thrown down by the wall with an order to stay there and cover her head with her arms.

 

            There was an _almighty_ bang.

 

            Outside, the Special Forces soldiers sprinted down towards the dormitory building, where windows had been blown out and walls decorated with troodontid intestine; only one had survived the blast unmaimed, and the soldiers dispatched that one with brutal efficiency, killing the others; the Bloody Nightmare had prevented them from being fit to eat anything, but a few were still not dead.

 

            The unmistakable, but somewhat shaken tones of Liz floated down from on high. “Um... so I think that went okay. Er. High five?”

 

            Ditzy laughed.

 

            “You all right, mate?” a startled Lieutenant Lyle shouted up, collecting his wits.

 

            “Yeah, I’m fine,” Ditzy yelled back, still laughing. “I’m just not sure my eardrums will ever be the same again!”

 

            Things went fairly easily after that. Al was stretchered out, and Jenny came down with an armed escort to collect Liz and intimidate Oliver into never saying anything about this ever again, but what with one thing and another, Liz found herself the last of the besieged to walk down the stairs, Tanya Lacey behind her.

 

            There was a lot of blood on the stairs. Liz slipped, and although Lacey lunged forward, she missed, and Liz crashed down to the foot of the stairs and slid to a stop at the foot of them, flat on her back in the remains of the troodontids. She lay still for a moment, then sat up and realised what the liquid soaking through the back of her shirt and her jeans was.

 

            “Are you okay?” Lacey wanted to know, hurrying down the stairs herself.

 

            “Yeah,” Liz said distantly, turning a nasty shade of greenish white. “Oh God-“

 

            She scrambled up, sprinted two steps and shoved a door open; it led to a toilet, and Liz dropped to her knees and retched violently- this time for real.

 


	6. Chapter 6

“Shit,” Lacey muttered, and went after her, placing a cautious hand on the girl’s back, trying to ignore the stripe of troodontid blood down it. “Liz, are you okay? What is it?”

 

            “I’m fine,” Liz said weakly, straightening, flushing the toilet she’d thrown up in and rinsing her mouth out at the sink. “I- Christ. I killed all those trudy-whatsits. Well, lots of them, anyway.”

 

            Lacey stared at her. “You did? How?”  


            “I made an explosive,” Liz mumbled. “The boys helped, but it was my idea.”

 

            “Impressive!”

 

            “Disgusting!” Liz retorted.

 

            “That too.” Lacey took her hand off the girl’s back and washed the blood off it.

 

            “Normally I don’t have a problem with blood,” Liz continued, “but... I... There was so much of it. And I was _sitting_ in it.”            She washed her hands, dried them, and then made to leave the bathroom. Lacey got out of the way. “What’s your name, anyway? I don’t know any of your names.”

 

            “I’m Lacey. Private Tanya Lacey.”

 

            Liz’s eyebrows shot up. “Tanya, or Lacey?”  


            “Lacey,” Lacey answered. _Definitely Lester’s kid_ , she thought to herself. There was no explaining that eerily similar expression in any way other than genetic inheritance.

 

            “Okay. I’m always Liz. Unless Dad is angry, and then it’s Eliza, and if he’s really angry it’s Elizabeth, and if he’s so angry he’s going to blow a fuse it’s Elizabeth Alison Lester.” Liz sighed as they walked out of the dorms. “I think this may be an Elizabeth Alison Lester day. I just hope he doesn’t blame Jenny for my getting into trouble.”

 

            They walked back up to the main building- Finn joined them outside the dorm, face unreadable except for the moment when he caught sight of Liz’s bloodstained back.

 

            “Just don’t ask,” Liz said wearily. “Don’t ask.”

 

           

            Unfortunately, everybody _was_ asking. She attracted more than a few shocked stares, and Jenny nearly fainted at the sight of Liz apparently leaking enough blood to paint one of the jeeps red from tyres to tail-lights. “Liz! What happened?”  


            “I slipped in trudy-whatsit guts,” Liz replied morosely. “And then I threw up. Which sucks.”

 

            “Guts?” Nick demanded. “You killed some?”  


            Liz halted, and gave Nick a look that Connor and Abby later agreed was best defined as ‘I really kind of hoped you had more sense than a brain-dead diplodocus, you know’, but luckily didn’t say anything inflammatory. Instead, she just said: “I’m going to have a shower and get changed. Abby says she’s got some spare things she can lend me. There’s a swimming pool and stuff in that big building over there-“ Liz pointed- “I promise not to mess around.”

 

            “Only if Lacey goes with you,” Jenny said firmly. “Your track record for not running into predatory dinosaurs is very bad indeed and we can’t be sure all the troodontids are gone.”

 

            The girl sighed. “Fine. Not a problem, unless Lacey minds. Thanks, Abby,” she added with a tired smile as Abby hurried over to her and handed her a carrier bag containing a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt. “I promise to send them back washed and everything.”

 

            Abby smiled back. “S’fine. I’ve spent enough time wearing half the muck in England to know a change of kit’s important.”

 

            Liz pulled a face. “I wouldn’t call it half the _muck_ in England. Maybe half the unspecified dinosaur guts in England.”

 

            The young woman laughed, and then turned and shouted “What? Oh, _Connor_!” in answer to a wail of “Abby!” from the unfortunate computer whiz, who had somehow managed to precipitate an avalanche of heavy equipment on top of himself which he was barely holding up. Liz blinked, and Lacey rolled her eyes; Jenny walked off a little way to take a call.

 

            “He really can’t look after himself, can he?” Liz murmured, shaking her head and watching Abby heave the largest of the cases off her friend.

 

            “On a computer, or out in the real world?” Lacey answered.

 

            “Real world.”

 

            “Not really.” Lacey shrugged. “I always thought that was what Abby did automatically. Rescuing Connor from himself.”

 

            “I just thought they were dating.” Liz shook herself. “Why am I standing around like a lemon? Let’s go. Well. I’ll go. If you really have to come, I don’t mind.” She set off determinedly in the direction of the building with the swimming-pool and attendant showers in, only to find Lacey overtake her when they reached the door of the building, which the soldier kicked open and pointed a rifle through.

 

            “I’m surprised it’s not locked,” Liz commented, following Lacey down the corridor.

 

            “Join the club.” Lacey cleared the complex to her own satisfaction, leaving Liz tapping her foot a little impatiently and clutching Abby’s spare things while the blood dried on her back, and then stood guard outside the changing-room door while Liz put Redwood House School’s hot water, spacious changing rooms and abandoned shower gel in the showers to use.

 

            Liz didn’t have a long shower, just a short one, long enough to get rid of the smell of blood and sneaking feeling of being filthier than she would have been had she attempted bog-snorkelling, but it was almost blisteringly hot and she scrubbed herself until her skin was pink and smarted slightly. She felt a lot better at the end, especially after she’d taken a towel out of the cupboard full of them, dried herself off and dressed in the clean clothes. She was trying to dry the wet ends of her hair under the hand-drying machines by the toilets beside the showers when she realised she wasn’t alone, and leapt almost a foot in the air. “Oh my God!”

 

            The newcomer was reasonably tall, and attractive in a mysterious, Indiana-Jones-only-not-a-guy kind of way; she wore her dark brown hair cut short, and her clothes were dusty and battered. Liz also noted the amount of cleavage on display, and the unpleasant look in her eyes: not openly hostile, but lacking in any kind of real warmth. “I’m sorry, you gave me a scare. Who are you?”

 

            “Oh, I’m just one of the teachers.” The woman smiled. Her voice was low, and smooth, but contained the same hints of ruthlessness as her eyes.

 

            “What do you teach?” Liz asked warily.

 

            “Biology.” The woman smirked, as if a private joke had just crossed her mind. “Sometimes physical education. And you are?”

 

            “Liz Lester.” She looked a bit odd for a teacher, but then she must have been out with a group of Guides. Or possibly Scouts.

 

            “Liz Lester?” Again with the private-joke smirk. If this woman was a teacher, she was a really annoying one. “I don’t think I teach you.”

 

            “I’m new,” Liz lied. Something about this woman was distinctly off. “Sorry, what’s your name?”

 

            “Dr. Cutter.”

 

            “Oh... cool.” Liz’s mind was racing. Cutter. Cutter. It wasn’t a very common name, was it? “Um, y’know something, Dr. Cutter?”

 

            “What?”

 

            “I don’t go to school here. _Lacey_!” Liz screamed, and there was the sound of Lacey crashing through the changing room doors, but the changing rooms were a labyrinth, and Helen Cutter stared at her for a few moments, then dashed off towards the swimming-pool. Without even thinking about it, Liz sprinted after her, following her as she ran beside the swimming-pool, Lacey gaining on them both as Helen crashed through the fire-exit doors at the end of the pool and out onto the grass, running for all she was worth.

 

            Liz was fit, young and fast, but Helen wasn’t exactly slow herself and Liz couldn’t get quite close enough to her to tackle her to the ground, but she thought she was gaining on the older woman when something glittering and white popped into being in the air not far away, and Helen put on a burst of speed and vanished through it- Liz almost tripped over from the sheer shock, and only just managed to bring herself to a stumbling halt and stop short of flying straight through the anomaly. She stood there, out of breath, staring at the anomaly. Lacey joined her after a moment, barking something into her radio that Liz didn’t catch.

 

            “Sod, she’s gone through,” Lacey stated the obvious, and then seized Liz’s arm as orders crackled through on her radio.

 

            “Oi! Get off!” Liz squeaked, catching her breath, as Lacey turned her round and started to tow her away from the anomaly.

 

            “No. My orders are to get you away from here,” Lacey said implacably.

 

            “Yeah, well, all you have to do is ask. It’s not like I’m that stupid that I’m just going to sit there and stare at the shiny prettiness until something murderous comes through it to eat me!” Liz objected, but Lacey paid no attention until they were well clear of the building and back with the team base, when she finally let go of Liz.

 

            Liz gave her a Grade Two scowl, which she then regretted not ratcheting up a few notches, as Lacey looked totally unaffected. Apparently the orders to get Liz away from the anomaly included staying with her to keep an eye on her, because Lacey stuck close to her; Liz itched to say something acid, possibly about why everyone was so excited about this Dr. Cutter anyway or why she was suddenly Miss Can’t-Look-After-Herself-At-All as far as everyone else was concerned.

 

Making a big show of ignoring Lacey, Liz went over to the jeep to root through her bag, producing her mobile phone and –after considerable digging- an energy bar, which advertised itself as containing apricots, raisins and nuts. She peeled the plastic off the energy bar and speed-dialled her father, munching her first mouthful as she talked. “Hi... Hi Dad. Yeah, I’m fine. Just- yes I am eating while I talk. It’s been a long time since breakfast, okay?... _What_ ever. I was just calling to apologise for ticking you off earlier... Well, you were being mean to Jenny, Dad, it’s not her fault you didn’t give her the keys or the receptionist foisted me off on her. Anyway, I’m sorry. I also wanted to say I’m okay. I had a bit of an, um, episode.”

 

            Silence. Lacey watched, fascinated. Liz winced. “I know I said to stay out of trouble, but Dad, this kid asked me for _help_. His friend was hurt. What was I supposed to do?... Admit it, you would have done exactly what I did... Yes, I did have an escort. No, I didn’t get hurt. I did blow some trudy-whatsits up, though.”

           

            Liz pulled the phone quickly away from her ear, grimacing, and Jenny drifted over to stand beside Lacey and eavesdrop. “I didn’t hurt anyone else, Dad, what _do_ you take me for, an idiot? Just quite a few trudy-whatsits. And I slipped in the mess so I’m going to need to wash my jeans and shirt, but that’s not a problem because I’ll be doing it myself. Seriously, Dad, I don’t think I was ever in that much danger. They’d never have got up the stairs and the Special Forces people got to us pretty quickly.” She took another bite of the bar. “I’m sorry I got myself in danger, too, but honestly, you would have done what I did as well. I know you, Dad.”

 

            “The thing is,” Jenny murmured, listening to Liz talk, “I thought I knew Lester as well, and I would never suspect of him of running around a school campus with troodontids on the loose and a weed-killer for a weapon because someone asked him for help.”

 

            Lacey made a non-committal noise.

 

            “I’ve got Jamie’s sketchbook, by the way. I can’t remember if I told you or not. Oh, and d’you want lasagne for d- _what_! I am _not_ letting you cook! You’ll give us both food poisoning!” Liz squawked, blissfully unaware of the fact that Jenny had to turn away, chewing her lip, to stop herself laughing, and Connor was snickering.

 

            “All right,” Liz conceded grudgingly. “Spaghetti carbonara. All right. See you then. Bye!”

 

            She ended the call and then checked her text messages, fatally engrossed in her phone as opposed to what she was eating, which was all the opportunity Ditzy needed to breeze past and whisk the half-eaten energy bar out of her lax grip. Liz made a noise like a kicked puppy. “What was _that_ for?”

 

            “You threw up. Do you really think eating again is a good idea?”

 

            “That was just because I was sitting in trudy-whatsit entrails! And it’s not even like there was much to throw up! Breakfast was a long time away!” Liz wailed, making an abortive grab for the energy bar.

 

            “You didn’t eat lunch?” Ditzy said disapprovingly.

 

            “Well, no. I went to see Jamie –my brother- in hospital, and then the school got set on fire so I couldn’t get back for lunch or my house keys, and I went to find Dad only he wasn’t at the ARC... and then there was a small matter of a pack of trudy-whatsits in Westbury! Lunch didn’t feature! Give that back!”

 

            Lacey patted Liz consolingly on the shoulder. “Ditzy does this to all of us every now and then. He’s tyrannical.”

 

“Hmph,” Liz said, disgruntled, shoved her hands in her pockets, fixed Ditzy with her best injured innocence look, and slouched off to kick the gravel with the toes of her shoes and sulk.

 

            “I can’t believe she just had a large part in making a lethal home-made bomb and she’s sulking over having her energy bar taken away,” Ditzy remarked, tucking the energy bar in question into a pocket. “She can’t eat till her stomach’s settled. Not if she’s been sick.”

 

            “I think you’re in somebody’s black books now, sir,” Lacey said, and followed the girl.

 

            Liz, who had made a detour to pick up the weed-killer and put it away, was already fishing gingerly through the prickly fern for the key. She found it, unlocked the door, and put the weed-killer away, still not acknowledging the fact that Lacey was there; having done that, she locked the door again, and dropped the key into the fern. Then she leaned back against the door, and said: “So who is this Dr. Cutter? Am I right in thinking she’s somehow related to Professor Cutter? She certainly doesn’t look like his sister.”

 

            Lacey paused. She knew about Helen Cutter, but was not at all sure she ought to tell Liz. There was a procedure to be used in these situations, and it was called passing the buck, but Lacey was going to need to pick her words carefully. “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell you about her. I haven’t a clue what I’m allowed to tell you and what I’m not.” She nodded at Jenny, who was some way off and unaware she was being watched. “Miss Lewis might have a better idea.”

 

            Liz raised her eyebrows and smiled slightly. “Thanks. I’ll ask Jenny.” She stepped away from the door and walked off towards Jenny. Lacey followed her.

 

            “This guarding thing could get really annoying,” Liz remarked without turning round.

 

            “You think you’re the only one suffering?” Lacey muttered.

 

            “I totally heard that.”

 

            Lacey didn’t have any little sisters, but she suspected that this was what having one was like.

 

***

 

            Jenny heard them coming. It was hard not to hear them wandering over, trading insults like a pair of sisters; well, at least they got along. Jenny needed someone keeping an eye on Liz now Helen had seen her –what if that wretched woman worked out who Liz was? She hated Lester; would she be mad enough to try and get at him through Liz?- and she could think of many worse choices to watch over Liz. Lieutenant Lyle, for instance, would probably interrogate her about the exact contents of the home-made bomb, and then try to replicate it. The ARC could do without that particular potential catastrophe, thank you so much.

 

            However, Jenny was distracted before Liz and Lacey got to her by the bleeping of her BlackBerry. She pulled it out, and realised that she’d just received a text message, and this one was not from an irate minister with a missing daughter or a flustered civil servant, but from Nick Cutter. Jenny opened it with a certain amount of trepidation, remembering the terse text that had heralded one persistent constable trussed up in the back of his car to stop him interfering, two adult oviraptors, their three spawn and a denuded chicken coop belonging to a retired film star who beat even Connor for a love of conspiracy theories.

 

            This one seemed harmless. Amusing, even, in a uniquely Nick sort of way. _have found kids. minister’s daughter asking for solicitor. SOS, NC,_ it read.

 

            Jenny chuckled.

 

            “Ooh!” Liz said, scenting gossip, and peered around Jenny’s shoulder to read the text message. Jenny snatched the phone away.

 

            “Liz!”

 

            “That was from Professor Cutter,” Liz said with gleeful satisfaction. “I knew he fancied you!”

 

            “ _Liz_!” Jenny squeaked furiously, turning bright pink about the ears.

 

            Liz laughed. “S’okay, I’m only teasing you.”

 

            “It’s _not funny_ ,” Jenny growled. “Professor Cutter is a _colleague_.”

 

            “Mm-hm,” Liz nodded, eyes wide and falsely innocent, temper much improved by the chance to tease someone. “Speaking of Professor Cutter, who is Dr. Cutter, how is she related to him, and why did she run a mile when I yelled for Lacey?”

 

            Jenny had had years of working in PR to teach her not to react like gambits like this, so she managed to keep a hold on herself. “I take it you want to know all.”

 

            “Yes please,” Liz said politely.

 

            “Right. Well. It’s a long story, so I suggest we go and sit down.”

 

            Liz correctly translated that as ‘I’ve been in these heels all day and my feet are killing me’, and nodded obligingly and suggested the school entrance hall.

 

            Jenny hesitated. “No, I’d prefer we stay within sight of the perimeter. The steps will do.”

 

            Liz’s eyebrows went up, but she made no complaint, so they all went and sat on the steps. Well, Liz and Jenny sat on the steps. Lacey stood two steps above them, watching.

 

            “Helen Cutter-“ Jenny began, and then stopped. Liz had snorted. “What?” she said, irritated.

 

            “Appropriate name, that’s all,” Liz grinned. “Although in this case it’s less the _face_ that launched a thousand ships and more the _cleavage_ that launched a thousand ships.”

 

            Jenny tried not to laugh, pressing her lips together. “Yes, well. Anyway, Helen Cutter was an extremely clever palaeontologist, and she married Nick Cutter, but I understand it wasn’t a peaceful marriage. One day, Helen vanished in the Forest of Dean. Eight years passed, she was declared dead. N- Professor Cutter mourned, and then found himself investigating a conspiracy theory his student Connor Temple had brought to him.”  


            “The first anomaly?” Liz enquired. Lacey eavesdropped diligently. She hadn’t heard all of this.

 

            Jenny shook her head. “No. Not at all, as it turned out. Anyway, Helen turned out to be involved; she’d been travelling through the anomalies for years. She asked N- Prof-“

 

            “For God’s sake just call him Nick, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”  


            “Stop interrupting! Helen asked Professor Cutter to go with her, but he refused.” Jenny sighed. “To cut a long story short, she led the team a very pretty dance, dropped the bomb that she’d slept with her then-student, and later Professor Cutter’s lab technician and best friend, Stephen Hart. Cue much emotional upheaval, a certain amount of dysfunction in the team, and further leading on from Helen. Eventually, Helen’s actions led to Stephen’s death. Professor Cutter is... unlikely... to forgive her.”

 

            “And where do I fit in to all of this?” Liz cross-questioned, digesting the information.

 

            “She saw you. You do resemble your father to a certain degree... I’m worried she recognised you, and could use you against him, or attack you to get at him.” Jenny prepared herself for outrage, which didn’t come.

 

            What there was instead was a very long pause. Then Liz blinked and said: “... Then I guess it was really stupid of me to tell her my name.”  


Jenny pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling stressed. “Yes, but you weren’t to know.”

 

“You could’ve told me,” Liz suggested.

 

“If you hadn’t been nearly eaten by a deinonychus, you would never, ever have found out about the ARC, let alone anything else,” Jenny pointed out.

 

“Blame it on the dino-knickerless, then. Seriously, what makes you think I couldn’t take Helen if I had to?” Liz asked.

 

“The fact that she is well known for borderline psychopathic behaviour? Don’t worry about it, Liz. It was a long shot,” Jenny reassured her. A car crunched onto the gravel, and Jenny looked up. “Ah. I think that’s your father.”

 

“Oh good,” Liz said cheerfully, springing up from her perch.

 

Lester got out of the car, and surveyed his surroundings, nose in the air, expression supercilious. Liz ran over to him, smiling widely. “About time, Dad!”

 

“Adolescent horror,” Lester said without preamble. “Some parents have well-behaved daughters, you know. I hear they never blow up troodontids.”

 

“Geriatric git,” Liz retorted happily, submitting to a one-armed hug. “Some daughters have well-behaved dads, you know. I hear they never take jobs involving the Official Secrets Act.”

 

Lacey glanced at Jenny. “I’ll go, then, ma’am. If my job’s done.”  


Jenny smiled at her, waiting for Lester and Liz to finish insulting each other. “I suspect it is.”

 

Greetings over, Lester and Liz strolled towards Jenny, Liz two or three steps behind. “Good afternoon, Jenny. I apologise for imposing my spawn on you.”

 

Liz squeaked indignantly and Jenny laughed. “It was no trouble. Liz was very helpful.”

 

“I’m glad to hear that,” Lester said, and then added slyly, “surprised, but glad. What’s the body count?”

 

“Troodontids, or humans?”

 

“Humans. Troodontids do not concern me unless they are alive and interfering with the proper running of the country,” Lester yawned.

 

Jenny stifled a smile for the sarcasm, but her expression turned more solemn very quickly. “Two Girl Guides and a teacher, as well as the cyclist, the pagan girl, and three possibles: a dogwalker who vanished at lunchtime- only three of the eight pets she was walking returned, so probably those as well –and two soldiers missing from Salisbury Plain. It’s hard to be sure; most died on the wrong side of the anomalies.”

 

Silence.

 

“That’s... heavier than I expected,” Lester said eventually.

 

“Mm,” Jenny agreed, looking at the toes of her shoes. “There were several anomalies spread over the area; all have now since closed, but the troodontids were using them like a bus service, darting in and out so we never knew where they would reappear next. Abby says they were behaving like a very large wolf pack or a predatory herd, co-ordinating their behaviour. And I’m afraid there’s one more piece of bad news.”

 

“More?” Lester asked wearily.

 

Jenny looked at Liz, who looked up at her father. “I came across Professor Cutter’s psycho wife in the changing-rooms. Chased her, but she went straight through an anomaly. She knows who I am.”

 

A pause. “Blast,” Lester said genteelly, swearing to himself that if that damned woman ever hurt his daughter, she would regret it. “And I think you’ll find _dear_ Helen is Cutter’s ex-wife. He gets a tad shirty if you get it wrong.”  


“I just bet you get it wrong to annoy him,” Liz predicted, changing the subject.

 

“I do no such thing,” the civil servant defended himself, and put an arm around his daughter’s shoulders.

 

“Visiting hours’ll be over at the hospital,” Liz commented.

 

“I dropped in on Jamie.”

 

“Good. How does spaghetti carbonara and Star Wars sound?”

 

“We will watch Star Wars over my dead body,” Lester said firmly.

 

“How about Stardust?” Liz suggested.

 

“That’s a compromise I can live with.”

 

 

Unbeknownst to them, Lacey was not the only one with a penchant for eavesdropping among the soldiers. “I can’t believe they’ve just heard the death toll and they’re discussing movies,” Finn mumbled, lovingly stowing various items of weaponry in sundry cases.

 

“I think it’s called trying to get back to normal,” Lyle said, glancing at the pair.

 

“Or they _could_ just be ghoulish. After all, he’s the Witch-King and she takes right after him,” Finn pointed out.

 

“You’re wrong about Liz. She’s definitely one of life’s Éowyns, I can’t see a Nazgûl making explosives to use on dinosaurs,” Lyle said absently, forgetting that Éowyn’s principal role in Lord of the Rings was to kill the Witch-King.  


Finn paused thoughtfully. “Now _there_ ’s a complicated father-daughter relationship for you.”


End file.
